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Cwylboar
The Cwylboar was a semi-legendary giant boar said to have terrorised the Cwylming region for decades. It was eventually slain in 433 by either Cyng Eomer Bonespear or Cyng Cyneheah Boarslayer depending on the person asked. Description The Cwylboar was said to be twenty-five hands (2.5 metres) high at the shoulder, with a hide of rough black bristles and glowing red eyes. Its tusks were long enough that, in Eomer's version of the story, his successor Cyng Seaxwulf of the Waves used one of these tusks to craft the main mast of his longship. In this same account, it was said to have killed anything that encroached on its territory, including dragons. The Legend In Eomer's account of the tale, he was accosted by villagers from a hamlet near Eordwald, a town in the Cwylming. They said that their village had been ransacked by this enormous monster. Eomer, ever the upstanding Cyng, gathered the Ricfriding Fyrdmen, two hundred in total, and set out to vanquish the beast. Eomer entered the Cwylming via Cenholme and, passing Eordwald, camped in the ruins of the hamlet for a week without incident. He decided the villagers were lying and began to head back to the capital, though this time via Cynrheorst - he wished to visit his old friend Leofheah Herewulf, the father of soon-to-be Cyng Cyneheah. Leofheah held a feast upon his arrival and all the Fyrdmen, Herewulf and Ricfriding, drank until they could no longer stand. Only Eomer, Leofheah and Cyneheah were left standing when, in the early hours of the morning, a bloodied villager burst into the feast hall and told them the Cwylboar had returned, attacking the outskirts of Cynrheorst. Pulling on their armour and arming themselves, the three men attempted to rouse the Fyrdmen to no avail. Committing themselves to fate, they rushed outside to engage the beast in combat. After a titanic struggle, the Cwylboar managed to gore Leofheah to death, leaving only Eomer and Cyneheah to face it. In a valiant effort, the pair managed to wound the beast and it limped away into the forest. The two men tracked it and found its nest, a forest clearing littered with the bones of marge creatures, speculated to be dragons, griffins and the such. The beast attacked them again, though Eomer and Cyneheah held their own With the monster on its last legs, Eomer let down his guard and the dying Cwylboar disarmed and charged him. Here is where the legend differs. In one version, Eomer grabbed a fragmented dragon rib from the ground and stabbed the beast through the roof of its mouth and into its brain, killing it instantly. The boar's momentum carried it through and it still hit and wounded him, however. In the other version of the tale, Eomer did not grab a weapon and was simply wounded and knocked unconscious by the Cwylboar's charge. Enraged, Cyneheah hacked the beast into an unrecognisable mess. After carrying Eomer's body back to Cynrheorst, he gathered firewood and burned the Cwylboar on a pyre to honour a worthy foe. This second version better explains how no physical evidence of the boar has been found past tusk marks on trees and hoof prints in the ground. Category:Folklore Category:Talor